Marilyn Shepherd reviews Paul McGeough's Kill Khalid

McGeough is that rare journalist who takes no sides or prisoners of his own but his compassion and care for those who are traumatised and battered always shine through. I scarcely feel qualified to give any sort of review of his book Kill Khalid but as the book itself is a tour de force that should be read by any and all people who can find it in themselves to have an open mind and open heart I will give it a shot.

I grew up with the romantic notion that Israel was really the story of Exodus as written by Leon Uris; I grew up thinking the Jews were so hard done by they were right to take the empty land and make it their own. I had no idea how deluded that was until the massacre in Sabra and Shatila in 1982 laid bare to the world the brutality and vicious hatred of those Jews towards the Arabs they saw as the enemy. My journey into the region led me to the case of Akram Al Masri and other Palestinians in 2002 which led me to a greater understanding of the area and has had me reading the works of Norman Finkelstein – Beyond Chutzpah and The Holocaust Industry – which show that the Israelis are not the victims: they are the criminals in what Finkelstein calls the satanic state.

Ilan Pappe’s Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine is a brave, landmark book which McGeough clearly used to explain his book. Jimmy Carter laid bare the lies and infamy of Barak’s Camp David walkout and non-deal and Arafat’s corruption and sellout of the people he was supposed to protect. Others like Gershom Gorenberg and Akiva Eldar have written about the illegal settlements and the impact on the Palestinians, and a few Palestinians who were displaced in 1848 have written of their experiences.

Journalists like Amira Hass, Gideon Levy and Uri Avnery have written for many years about the cruel occupation and the plight of the Palestinians. We need to hear their voices.

It is those experiences that led to the birth of Khalid Mishal and his so-called terrorism. I say that because when I compare his life to the privilege of someone like Netanyahu and Peres I cannot call the man a terrorist.

Two protagonists: Israel which was built on lies, spin, terrorism and ethnic cleansing over many years and Palestine which was a nation of farmers, olive growers and ordinary human beings for 2000 years or so who were the victims of the ethnic cleansing. I state now that my grandfather was in Palestine in WW11 with the 2AIF and I grew up hearing of their hospitality, kindness and caring for their fellow man and frankly the cruel, racist brutality of the Zionist my grandfather encountered. He was injured by one such person and was defended by a Palestinian farmer, something these two men had in common.

Rather than repeat the reviews that have been written so far I would like to explain how I feel about Mishal and how I understand what made him.

At the age of 11 he and his family were forced out of the West Bank in the Six Day War and the illegal occupation of the land by Israelis. Like the refugees in 1948, these new refugees thought they could go home: the UN had said Israel could not keep the land. They were as wrong as the first refugees because the Israelis simply started building illegal outposts by calling them “military”, and once the world decided it was OK they turned them into what we see today. Rows and rows of red roofed Jews only homes connected by Jews only roads, all deliberately built to be fortress outposts spying on the Palestinians and making their lives a living hell in smaller and smaller spaces.

Mishal is just a couple of years younger than me: a teacher, a lad made homeless and left drifting without any real home since 1967. He graduated highly as a physics teacher in his land of exile, Kuwait, and became interested in getting his home back even if that meant violence. So he connected with the Muslim brotherhood and dreamed of his homeland until 1991 when Arafat backed the wrong horse in the attack on Kuwait and Kuwait expelled over 400,000 Palestinians.

In Jordan he was almost murdered by Netanyahu, a man who got his education in America and had every privilege in Israel on his return. A man who came to be the PM and decided to murder a man whom he had never met, who was not really very important in the scheme of Hamas and at the same time triggered an international crisis from Canada, to Jordan, the US, Israel and Palestine that lost him his job in the end.

I know that I am supposed to be appalled at the actions of Hamas but I cannot find myself in that place – I find myself in sympathy instead because I see that Israel is the real terrorist entity here and has been since the 19th century when Hertzl and a few others decided they wanted Palestine. I find that telling the Palestinians not to fight back against the oppression, imprisonment and ritual torture and torment is the same as telling the victim of a gang rape to smile nicely at her rapists and then thank them.

The first terrorist attack by Hamas was not launched until after Baruch Goldstein entered a mosque, while people prayed, and committed a massacre. That was answered with a suicide bomber.

I won’t go any further; I do though recommend this timely book and suggest that everyone read it from the view of an open mind instead of the closed Zionist spin.

Mishal has never raised a weapon himself: he lives in hiding, he has had Netanyahu try to kill him, has had Zionists drive him from his home, he has been exiled three times and has no real home.

Who am I, who are you, to judge this man as a terrorist when he is far more sinned against than sinner? To my mind Bibi is the terrorist and yet he has just been re-elected by the Israeli people who know he is a terrorist and just don’t care. Livni is a war criminal, Barak is a war criminal, Peres is a war criminal. The Israeli cabinet are all war criminals just elected by a criminal non-state while 6 million Palestinians have still lost their homes, their land, their lives and their hope.

I think that Fatah's Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades need to take "credit" for the crazed axe-murder of a 13 year old child provides some insight to the moral compass of the "moderate" element of the resistance movement, don't you?

Then there are those who now support Hamas because Fatah weren't extreme enough.

John Pratt: "I am simply expressing my concern that a democratically elected government such as in Israel is verging on the extreme when we allow Israeli army commanders to issue orders that even their own soldiers condemn."

Well, Hamas was democratically elected, too, as its apologists never fail to remind us, albeit with only 44 percent of the vote (McGeough, op cit, p324).

For example, Hamas parliamentarian Miriam Farhat, "otherwise known as the Mother of Martyrs":

"She had seen off three of her sons as suicide bombers and had produced a campaign video of herself helping her seventeen-year-old boy into his bomb vest before he went off to kill five Israeilis."

- Paul McGeough, op cit, p324

Miriam is the very epitome of Hamas and all it stands for.

Her son, Muhammad, may have been too young to vote, but mum found a way for him to help the cause, anyway.

An investigation by a group of former Israeli soldiers has uncovered new evidence of the military's conduct during the assault on Gaza two months ago. According to the group Breaking the Silence, the witness statements of the 15 soldiers who have come forward to describe their concerns over Operation Cast Lead appear to corroborate claims of random killings and vandalism carried out during the operation made by a separate group of anonymous servicemen during a seminar at a military college. ..

"This is not a military that we recognise," said Mikhael Manekin, one of the former soldiers involved with the group. "This is in a different category to things we have seen before. We have spoken to a lot of different people who served in different places in Gaza, including officers. We are not talking about some units being more aggressive than others, but underlying policy. So much so that we are talking to soldiers who said that they were having to restrain the orders given."

It is sad to see that commanders in the Israeli Army have been accused of using tactics that could have come straight from the Waffen-SS handbook.

"Our people must choose the path of Holy War because, if we do not fight, our people will die. This world only understands the language of force... If the enemy kills [our] civilians, it is our right to kill their civilians."

"On June 10, 1944, the SS occupied the town. The entire population of the town was rounded up. Men were separated from women and children. The women and children were herded into a church. The men were locked in 5 garages and barns, where they were shot. The buildings were then torched. The church with 400 women and children locked inside was also razed to the ground."

"At the Netanya hospital, chief medical officer Avinoma Skolnik said sixty-eight people had been admitted, twenty two of them critically injured. In the end, thirty were dead and another hundred and forty were injured, all of them civilians. Shockingly, most were in their seventies or older. It was the sixtieth suicide bombing in one and a half years of renewed conflict."

And even if you add this 184 it pales into insignificance to the 989 murdered by Israel during 2002, don't you agree?

Now I don't believe anyone should kill anyone but I don't believe that the Palestinians should sit around and be collectively punished and slaughtered by the Israelis anymore than I believe the Afghans and Iraqis should sit around and be slaughtered by us.

And nor does McGeough, no matter how often you try to misrepresent the book and the meaning of the book.

It is a book about Hamas to counter the many self-serving hypocrites in the west who believe Hamas are just so beyond the pale that they cannot be talked to.

Tell me Eliot, what right did Bibi have to try and assassinate the man?

Eliot, I am not defending Hamas, I think they are extremists. I am simply expressing my concern that a democratically elected government such as in Israel is verging on the extreme when we allow Israeli army commanders to issue orders that even their own soldiers condemn.

Just because terrorists and criminals behave badly is no excuse for civilized society to behave badly.

John Pratt: "Just because terrorists and criminals behave badly is no excuse for civilized society to behave badly."

I could not agree more. Well said.

There are a few other habits of civilised people. For instance:

They do not assume that everything published that is intensely hostile to a particular civilised society, or its military, is true. Especially when it has been proven over and over again that the source is unreliable and that terrorists especially ,coldly,deliberately and calculatingly fight their wars in part with lying, slanderous, misleading, and racist propaganda. Buckets of it.

They do not make the terrible mental mistake of drawing moral equivalence between terrorists and criminals , on the one hand, civilized society, on the other.

Israel's a diversionary tactic. If the human rights abusers who are on the council: Saudi Arabia, Cuba, China, Russia are dictating human rights policy. The best way of preventing criticism of one's own backyard is to divert attention.

And that's how Israel is being used. Does it mean that Israel has no human rights problems? Obviously not, but it's not 60 per cent of the world's problems. When a billion people in China are ignored and the people of Zimbabwe are ignored altogether."

The International Committee of the Red Cross said Thursday it had discovered "shocking" scenes — including small children next to their mothers' corpses — when its representatives gained access for the first time to parts of Gaza battered by Israeli shelling. It accused Israel of failing to meet obligations to care for the wounded in areas of combat.

John Pratt: "Israel has a slightly better record than Mugabe. I am not sure we should use him as a yardstick though."

Well, Paul McGeough has actually provided a yardstick, John, and according to him Israel has a much, much better record than not just Mugabe, indeed its has the best record on human rights of all the states in the Middle East.

See my comment below on March 15, 2009 - 11:09am regarding Paul's feature article on page 6 of the Sydney Morning Herald's 'News Review' lift-out for March 14-15, 2009, specifically the accompanying 'Political Freedom Index' chart which rates political freedom in 18 separate Middle Eastern nations on a scale of one-to-ten "with one being the lowest score and 10 the highest."

Israel ranks the best with a score of 8.2 with Lebanon a distant second best at 6.55.

If you need to make comparisons, base them on something, I say. And Paul has...

Which reminds me of this rather startling little paragraph in Paul's book:

"[Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmad} Yassin discovered as well in his enforced absence, Hamas had changed. The ragtag militia run by the movement at the time of his jailing had morphed into the sophisticated, disciplined, and brutally efficient Qassam Brigade, whose attacks could kill dozens of Israelis and injure a hundred more."

On January 14, Israeli police claimed that Hamas had fired a single mortar shell with white phosphorus from Gaza into Israel. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the shell had landed in a field near Sderot that morning, causing no injuries or damage. Haaretz newspaper reported that it hit an open field in the Eshkol area in the western Negev.

A Human Rights Watch researcher went to Sderot the next day to investigate, but local authorities said they were unaware of the attack. One Sderot resident said he had heard about a mortar shell, possibly with white phosphorus, landing in a field outside of town, but he did not know where. When asked for details, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told Human Rights Watch that "all I have is what's in the press release."

Now Eliot, if your land was occupied, your people being starved to death by the neighbours in an illegal occupation that has been known to be illegal for over 40 years, what would you do?

Sit and die slowly? Or build a resistance?

And Falk was denied access to Gaza by those lovely democratic chaps in Israel.

He is calling for an independent inquiry to examine possible war crimes committed by both Israel and Hamas.

Further, Mr Falk suggests that the Israeli blockade of Gaza is in violation of the Geneva Conventions and must be lifted.

The report is certain to anger Israel, which has long complained of bias by Mr Falk.

But Mr Falk is not the first to suggest that Israel may have committed war crimes in Gaza.

Mr Falk, a UN human rights investigator, says Israeli actions may constitute a war crime. He joins a growing chorus, including the International Red Cross, accusing Israel of war crimes. It is about time all support to Israel was cut and Israel was added to the Axis of Evil, joining the list of other rogue nations.

Paul Walter: "Certainly enough TV stations broadcasted reports on Gaza atrocities over the weekend and blog sites like Huffington Post are full of it."

Interestingly, Arianna Huffington came under attack (from some circles) for not going hard enough on the recent Gaza attacks. The feeling was that she kept the Democrat line. She's a good girl after all. And like all "businesses" or at least political party fronts, funding is the air that is breathed. And you don't get that kicking the shit out of the product.

Perhaps someone should give Mr William a quiet reminder.

And here I was "hardly contained" excitement just waiting to discuss how much the "evil" military American Industrial Complex Umbrella saves (no need for products already guaranteed) Australia in defence spending. That would be, like, money that now goes toward health, education, and the seemingly "endless" welfare. Now, I wonder if it approaches anything like Israeli gifts?

Mr William no doubt has already sent off his emails demanding Mr Rudd kicks the evil Americans out of Australia forthwith. I fully anticipate (can hardly wait) his scathing criticisms should this certainty (it's the "free" Austalia party after all) not eventuate.

Eliot, may I proffer the suggestion of probably the Haaretz feed Marilyn Shepherd so thoughtfully provided for the better education of Webdiarists?

Certainly enough TV stations broadcasted reports on Gaza atrocities over the weekend and blog sites like Huffington Post are full of it . And the Paul McGeough reports yesterday were anything but balm for Zionists.

The idea of reviewing a book is to get people to read it. Many people are now reading this book here in Adelaide and see the same sadness in the situation that I do.

No-one is all good or all bad. Hamas were allowed to flourish because they provided services from money collected all over the world which let Israel off the hook.

They only became the bad guys when they fought back and having got to know many refugees who have been displaced many times over I feel for Khalid on that level.

Surely no-one could deny the man and his people have had a pretty raw deal not only from Israel but from the rest of the world who have punished these people for daring to want to keep their land for the past 60 years.

It is wrong and disgusting.

That is why I feel such sympathy and sadness for Khalid and I am not alone.

You say it is 20 years old, but the racist Charter was reaffirmed unchanged as policy by Hamas as recently as 2005.

"In 2005, the movement had appointed a committee to review Hamas's controversial 1988 Charter - with its offensive language, its anti-Semitism, its incitement to battle and its calls for the elimination of the state of Israel. In a costly fit of pique over being consigned to the sin bin by the US and others after its election win, Hamas shelved the review."

Please Eliot. I read the McGeough SMH articles, too. And no way is he trying to make Hamas the issue. He offers an explanation for the attitude of Hamas -a "context" as Marilyn Shepherd terms it - and it would help the debate if you dropped the straw man diversionary antics and fessed up, as to what you really understand the McGeough position to be.

Does it hurt to be honest, when you know what the real situation is?

Bearing in mind Kant's notion that one should not advocate a situation as general unless you are prepared to live under the proffered conditions yourself, do you really tell me you would like to live as a Palestinan?

So, you really would love to one of those lucky Palestinans living in that cornucopian heaven that constitutes the West Bank and Gaza, rather than as one of those poor underdog Israelis with their vast American and Zionist sponsorship, higher standard of living, and two hundred nuclear weapons to keep them warm at night?

Why not move to Gaza?

But if not, if it's because it's not "right" (for Eliot?) to live like a dog, then why not consider if Palestinians should have to live like that?

Marilyn, on a number of occasions on this and other threads, you have claimed Hamas has repudiated its racist and genocidal Charter.

This from Paul McGeough and Khalid Mishal in yesterday's Herald:

Will the charter be rewritten?

"Not a chance. The message to us from the world was absolute rejection of the election outcome, because the result was not acceptable to the US and to corrupt elements of the Palestinian community [read Fatah].

"Our approach is not by means of changing the charter, a document written in 1988, but by virtue of our policy program today. Judge us by what we do today - not by what was written more than 20 years ago.

What explains this contradiction with your statements by Paul and Khalid?

As the head of Hamas, why does Khalid not think the Charter is still in effect?

Me (Eliot): "As the head of Hamas, why does Khalid not think the Charter is still in effect?"

I must apologise to readers. I was trying to write that comment at one of those crappy coin-slot operated sit-down internet thingies in the ground-floor foyer of the Millennium building in Kings Cross this morning, all the while juggling a doughnut (yum) and take-away coffee.

Clearly, the question should have been:

"As the head of Hamas, why does Khalid think the Charter is still in effect?"

Marilyn Shepherd: "The first terrorist attack by Hamas was not launched until after Baruch Goldstein entered a mosque, while people prayed, and committed a massacre. That was answered with a suicide bomber."

Baruch Goldstein was a solitary lunatic with no role in the government of Israel or its agencies at all. And he was immediately killed at the Mosque himself by bystanders.

According to the same logic, the "answer" to Martin Bryant's massacre at Port Arthur would be to set off a few suicide bombs in Collins Street, Melbourne or perhaps Queen Street, Brisbane.

"Violent retaliation against the leadership of Hamas - wherever they were in the world - had been first sanctioned by an emergency meeting of the Israeli cabinet after the twin suicide bombings almost two months earlier on July 30, in which sixteen people had been killed at the Jerusalem produce markets. Netanyahu had emerged from that meeting declaring, "I'll get those bastards, if it's the last thing I do."

- Kill Khalid, page 163

They're Paul McGeough's words, Marilyn.

Give it up, Marilyn. Khalid Mishal is the head of Hamas, not the simple country boy and cockeyed optimist, who got himself mixed up in the high stakes game of world diplomacy and international intrigue that you portray.

The Mossad hit may have been botched, but to portray Khalid Mishal as some innocent is laughable.

You haven't seen the latest reports of Israeli troop atrocities emblazoned on plasma screens across the country?

When are you finally going to own up to this charade that is Israel, and the motives for the charade of your perverse defence of it, to the point of slurring more sincere and better informed posters like Marilyn Shepherd,regardless of all the facts that continue to emerge that cause observers to question your motives and sincerity, in your recalcitrant defence of the oppressor?

Paul Walter: "Eliot, you should get out more, or at least access the media."

You didn't provide a link, Paul. But I assume you mean this report by Jason Koutsoukis:

"ISRAEL is under mounting international pressure to begin its own investigation into possible war crimes committed during its January assault on Hamas in the Gaza Strip that killed at least 1300 Palestinians"

- Jason Koutsoukis March 21 2009.

Is that the same Jason Koutsoukis, about whom Marilyn said this only a week ago:

Koutsoukis's article is mischief writ large as a result of McGeough's book pointing out in graphic detail how many times Fatah have sold out the people of Palestine in general and Gaza in particular. In 2007 Israel, Fatah and the US combined with Dahlan's "troops" to kill as many Hamas people as possible and stage a coup against the elected Hamas government of Palestine.

Now this week four Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan have been killed and eight more injured, two Australians have been killed, Americans and Brits have been killed this week.

if we condone the atrocities by Israel we are saying to our own soldiers "go for it boys and girls, kill anyone you want, that is fine", and then like the Israelis we will whine if they fight back against our invasion.

I do not want Australians killed anywhere because our own government are AIPAC shills thank you very much.

I wasn't previously aware of this one, described in Paul McGeough's book:

"Four days after [King} Hussein's letter to Netanyahu, one of the King's soldiers snapped, murdering seven Israeli schoolgirls and wounding six others on a school outing to an island on the Jordan River."

- page 125

Paul provides a very moving account of the King's utter grief at this incident and the extraordinary and touching lengths he went to help console the girls' families. Much to the disgust of Hamas, of course.

No more. Not one word. You don't care for the truth or the reality but if you want to read about some terrorism why don't you try 1967 by Tom Segev.

Listen. The Palestinians are not sitting around bored with their lives and simply deciding to kill people. Their country has been fucking illegally occupied for 61 years and they are allowed to fight that occupation.

We cheer when the Tibetans fight the repression of the Chinese and that is nowhere near as bad as the horror inflicted on the Palestinians.

McGeough's book is about the rise of Hamas and how it happened and it lays directly at the doors of the US and Israel.

Cop it sweet sunshine. You are cherry picking simply for the few atrocities committed by the Palestinians.

Read the B'Tselem stats and get back to us with some sense.

The Palestinians should not be forced to sit around and die just to appease the intruders.

A male Arab citizen in Israel who desires to marry a woman of his Hamula will often find her in the West Bank or in a refugee camp in Lebanon or Syria. The woman will generally join her husband and be taken in by his family. In theory, her husband could join her in Ramallah, but the standard of living there is much lower, and all his life – family, work, studies – is centered in Israel. Because of the large difference in the standard of living, a man in the occupied territories who marries a woman in Israel will also usually join her and receive Israeli citizenship, leaving behind his former life.

It is hard to know how many Palestinians, male and female, have come to Israel during the 41 years of occupation and become Israeli citizens this way. One government office speaks of twenty thousand, another of more than a hundred thousand. Whatever the number, the Knesset has enacted an (officially “temporary”) law to put an end to this movement.

As usual with us, the pretext was security. After all, the Arabs who are naturalized in Israel could be “terrorists”. True, no statistics have ever been published about such cases – if there are any – but since when did a “security” assertion need evidence to prove it?

Behind the security argument there lurks, of course, a demographic demon. The Arabs now constitute about 20% of Israel’s citizens. If the country were to be swamped by a flood of Arab brides and bridegrooms, this percentage might rise to – God forbid! – 22%. How would the “Jewish State” look then?

The matter came before the Supreme Court, The petitioners, Jews and Arabs, argued that this measure contradicts our Basic Laws (our substitute for a nonexistent constitution) which guarantee the equality of all citizens. The answer of the Ministry of Justice lawyers let the cat out of the bag. It asserts, for the first time, in unequivocal language, that:

One should read this sentence several times to appreciate its full impact. This is not a phrase escaping from the mouth of a campaigning politician and disappearing with his breath, but a sentence written by cautious lawyers carefully weighing every letter.

If we are at war with “the Palestinian people”, this means that every Palestinian, wherever he or she may be, is an enemy. That includes the inhabitants of the occupied territories, the refugees scattered throughout the world as well as the Arab citizens of Israel proper. A mason in Taibeh, Israel, a farmer near Nablus in the West Bank, a policeman of the Palestinian Authority in Jenin, a Hamas fighter in Gaza, a girl in a school in the Mia Mia refugee camp near Sidon, Lebanon, a naturalized American shopkeeper in New York – “collective against collective”.

Of course, the lawyers did not invent this principle. "

When faced with this sort of statement by the Jews of Israel who declare war on Palestinians everywhere you need to ask, who is the terrorist?

Marilyn Shepherd:"When faced with this sort of statement by the Jews of Israel who declare war on Palestinians everywhere you need to ask, who is the terrorist?"

Marilyn. do you have the Allen & Unwin paperback edition of Kill Khalid by Paul McGeough?

Turn to the image plates in the centre of the book.

Turn to the photograph with the caption: "June 11 2003. Emergency and forensic crews examine the bus destroyed by a suicide bombing that killed sixteen Israelis and injured more than a hundred in Jerusalem. Hamas later claimed responsibility."

Look beside the bus, near where the policeman is holding the ladder against the wreckage. See the children's and women's shoes lying in the large pool of blood and oil?

Hamas.

Now look at the left hand side of the picture, about two thirds towards the top of the image? See the guys in the white overalls? See all the large, white bags lying on the street?

They're body bags. The owners of the shoes.

Hamas.

Here's a picture of another bus . Fifteen dead that time. Including kids.

Resolution 181 was only a non-binding suggested idea for a "Jewish" state. Israel rejected it out of hand because they would be forced to set borders.

Israel still has not bothered to set borders, write a constitution, refuses to set borders and continues to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians out of their own land.

Therefore Israel is not and never has been a state.

And as land that is taken by force is not allowed to be held by force under the Geneva conventions Israel is not and never has been a state.

Israel is what Australia was before federation - a bunch of squatters on someone else's bloody land.

As a condition for its admission to the United Nations Organization, Israel formally agreed to accept General Assembly Resolution 181 (II) (1947) (partition/Jerusalem trusteeship) and General Assembly Resolution 194 (III) (1948) (Palestinian right of return), inter alia. Nevertheless, the government of Israel has expressly repudiated both Resolution 181 (II) and Resolution 194 (III). Therefore, Israel has violated its conditions for admission to U.N. membership and thus must be suspended on a de facto basis from any participation throughout the entire United Nations System.

Second, any further negotiations with Israel must be conducted on the basis of Resolution 181 (II) and its borders; Resolution 194 (III); subsequent General Assembly resolutions and Security Council resolutions; the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions of 1949; the 1907 Hague Regulations; and other relevant principles of public international law.

Franklin Lamb: international lawyer.

Now as a state is defined as a specific place with defined borders, Israel is not a state.

Marilyn Shepherd: "Israel is what Australia was before federation - a bunch of squatters on someone else's bloody land."

Actually, you raise a very good point. Because there was no Palestinian state before the founding of Israel, either.

Like the colonies of Australia, what we call Palestine today was a network of colonial possessions belonging to a pre-World War One era empire, in their case the Ottoman Empire based in Turkey.

Even after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Palestine was a mandated territory administered by Britain under the terms of the Versailles Treaty and the subsequent dispensation of Ottoman territories.

So, unlike Israel, which is recognised as a state, there has never been a separate Palestinian state apart from Jordan.

Thanks Marilyn. It's a good point.

There could be a Palestinian State, if those idiots at Hamas would recognise Israel like Jordan and Egypt. But since they're completely stupid...

Marilyn Shepherd: " Israel is what Australia was before federation - a bunch of squatters on someone else's bloody land."

Australia recognised Israel as a state in 1948.

Israel is a member state of the United Nations.

Not only that, the major Arab states of Egypt and Jordan recognize Israel as a state and have diplomatic relations with them.

Therefore, even two of the major regional Arab states recognise Israel as a state. And they've both been in wars with Israel!

Scores of other nations have embassies with Israel, and so recognise Israel's statehood.

The basis for statehood is recognition by other states.

Here's another part of the legal definition of statehood:

"Thus a border dispute with another country does not cast doubt on the territorial status of a country. It is only important that a country has a clear core territory in order to be a state. As the example Israel shows, even the denial of certain groups and states about its existence and the resulting conflict do not terminate Israel’s status as a state."

Marilyn Shepherd: "Now as a state is defined as a specific place with defined borders, Israel is not a state"

Not according to the legal definition above: "It is only important that a country has a clear core territory in order to be a state"

So, nope, Marilyn. You're dead wrong.

Many states have disputed borders and territorial boundaries..

According to your logic, the Republic of Ireland would not be a state because the status of Ulster is disputed. China would not be a state because of Tibet. Japan would not be a state because both North Korea and China dispute the possession of the Senkaku Islands.

Did the United States only become a state only after it included Hawaii in the Union in 1959? Or was it a state before it admitted Hawaii? Or will it only become a state only if it includes Puerto Rico?

Where does it begin and where does it end, according to your logic?

Try this one for size: Germany is not a state because it lost Eastern Prussia to Poland.

Look, it's time to face facts. Marilyn either has not read Paul McGeough's book Kill Khalid and it is that which accounts for her being neither able nor willing to refer to anything in the book; or else she has deliberately and wilfully ignored the entire content of the book because it paints a bleak, dark picture of Hamas,

Perhaps at best she has been fed some second- or third-hand account of it, and imagines it's about "the attempted murder of a man", when in fact it is a very useful, balanced and informative account of the rise of one of the more loathsome ultra-right, facistic Islamist political and terrorist organisations of our time.

You may recall that Marilyn has previously, falsely attributed her own bigoted opinions to prominent authors as their content, for example Giles MacDonogh in the While truth regrows its torn off limbs thread (see my comment Relentless and intractable on June 14, 2008 - 10:59am)and see also where Marilyn recruits MacDonogh (quite dishonestly) for her attempt at quasi-Holocaust denial at Eliot, the archives say differently, submitted by Marilyn Shepherd on June 13, 2008 - 5:30pm.

How could fraudulently diverting funds from a sovereign charity by forging cheques and then using the stolen money to pay down your personal home mortgage not be fraud?

It is palpably absurd to pretend that such a thing could be anything other than fraud.

The Hamas gangsters, and Paul McGeough carefully reports these matters in detal in his book, milk front 'charities' of millions of dollars every year to fund Hamas's political and military activities, and into the bargain leading Hamas identities divert funds for their personal use.

It beggars belief that anyone could pretend that that is not corruption.

Moreover, Galloway was actually suspended from parliament because of his criminal activities, which involved filching oil with a lift value of millions of dollars actually intended for starving Iraqis.

The evidence against Galloway is identical, actually identical, to that used against the Australian Wheat Board, namely detailed Iraqi oil ministry documentation.

You have no problem accepting the guilt of the Australian Wheat Board, but you refuse to face the compelling, closely documented and identical facts about Galloway?

Didn't the Australian Government (the lobby no doubt) even support the latest attacks in Gaza? They even went further than the United States. Or I'm I mistaken? I can't seem to find any condemnation from Mr William. Though, I do understand his latest interest is a very recent development.

Probably not surprising if one considers they're led by a person with a few hundred million, that condemns (for a few votes) the very system that made him wealthy. Nothing wrong with a dog whistling and vote buying in the political game. That's after all what it's all about.

Though, it does remind me of the Pastor preaching from the steps of the whorehouse. In his underwear.

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